


Full Moon

by in_lighter_ink



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: 500-1000 words, Comment Fic, F/M, OC
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-04
Updated: 2011-07-04
Packaged: 2017-10-21 00:57:27
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/219145
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/in_lighter_ink/pseuds/in_lighter_ink
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Prompt: Sherlock (BBC), any, full moon</p><p>Lestrade's mobile rings in the middle of the night. It's not the first time.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Full Moon

"Fuck."

His muffled curse woke her -- she hadn't even heard his mobile ring and rattle on the bedside table. She shifted, sleepy and annoyed at the cold air sneaking in uninvited from his side of the bed as he twisted the duvet in the struggle to find the bloody thing with his eyes only half-open.

"Lestrade." His gravelly, sleep-dark rasp would be sexy if only he wasn't talking to someone else. "What? Yeah. Okay. I'll be there in -- no, it's fine."

It was absolutely, definitely not fine. "Shit," he cursed again, just a whisper, as he levered himself up enough to swing his feet over the side of the bed. She watched him stay like that, forearms resting on thighs, head bent, hands scrubbing violently through his hair, making the already-unruly spikes even worse.

With his back to her, she was reasonably certain he didn't know she was awake, and she didn't make a move to change that. It was rare that she got a moment like this, a moment when she could just watch her husband, without being watched back. It was terribly, frighteningly intimate, even after all their years of holding it together, to see Greg so unguarded, moonlight streaming in through the window and making him pale and vulnerable, cruelly delineating every worry line and scar he'd accumulated over the years. He was tired, and he ached: she could see it in the way he sat, so obviously needing the time to steel himself for the reality of doing a job that called him out of bed at three o'clock in the morning for god-knew-what kind of horror.

She hated it, sometimes, hated that she'd ended up marrying the man she loved as well as half the Metropolitan Police, and all the cases, and all the victims, and all the grief and the heartbreak and the fucking mobile phone ringing at all hours because her husband was so damned good at his job. She hated to see the sadness that hadn't been in Greg's eyes when they'd been twenty-nine and delirious and too caught up in each other to care all that much about anything else.

Hated that their daughter would eventually be able to see all that pain too. She worried, constantly, about the kinds of things that Greg saw, knew they were out there, just waiting for Sam to be caught unawares. She hated the worry and the helplessness of it all, and the fear that one day, a couple of stern-faced sergeants would knock on the door and not know what to say to the newest Yard widow.

But she loved Greg.

And couldn't take seeing him bear all that tension in his shoulders all by himself.

She shifted again, making some noise, and smoothed a hand over his hunched shoulders. Pressed a kiss to the freckle on his right shoulder-blade, the same freckle she always kissed when he got called out to a crime scene in the middle of the night. (She couldn't not -- it was a ritual now, and one that always brought him home to her and Sam.) Fancied she could taste the moon on his skin.

"You have to go?" she asked his bent head.

He turned around, just enough to catch her lips apologetically, lingering. "Yeah. Sounds like a bad one."

"They always are, love."

He didn't say anything to that -- the words were part of the ritual, too, and so was this silence. Five heartbeats, ten...

"Tell Sam..."

"Yeah. Be safe."

"You too, Jules."

That was her cue to roll back over and try to go back to sleep while he took the most cursory of showers and fumbled on clothes with only the moon for light. Tried to look like she wasn't staying awake to listen as he slipped as quietly as he could out of the flat and into the night.

She'd fall back asleep eventually, would wake roughly two and a half hours later (and precisely two minutes before the real alarm, the proper alarm that woke people up at reasonable hours of the morning, was set to go off). That little bit of sleep will have made her forget for a moment, and she'll shiver, colder than she's used to being, and fling an arm over to Greg's empty side of the bed, the duvet still twisted and rumpled from his late-night exit. And then she'll remember, and start the day anyway, will make breakfast and argue with Sam about eating it, will search for the lost folder or textbook or pencil or permission form, and will manage to get both of them off to school on time. Neither will mention Dad's absence -- they'll both know where he is.

She can manage it on her own. She absolutely can.

Even if the moon, still hanging full and pale and ominous in the daytime sky, will remind her. Constantly.

But she'll continue on, because she can't imagine waking up to an empty half of a bed that Greg hadn't slept in for at least a couple of hours. Because she can't imagine going to sleep without him.


End file.
